


Darkness and Dreams

by byericacameron



Series: Canon AU [4]
Category: Cut & Run - Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-15
Updated: 2014-10-15
Packaged: 2018-02-21 07:21:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2459747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/byericacameron/pseuds/byericacameron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They all have demons in their past that keep them up some nights, but since they went missing for a month, Nick and Ty's have been worse than any of them had ever imagined. Kelly only wishes there were better ways to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Darkness and Dreams

Kelly had absolutely no idea what was keeping him awake. No one was having sex. No car alarms were wailing in the neighborhood. No fireworks to set off nightmares. The temperature was cool but not cold and the breeze through the windows felt nice. His bed was comfortable and his multiple pillows arranged just the way he liked them. It didn’t matter. Kelly couldn’t keep his eyes shut for more than a few minutes before he found himself staring at the ceiling and making constellations of the popcorned surface.

 _Fuck this shit_ , he thought as he rolled out of bed. It was a waste of time to be awake and doing nothing. Especially doing nothing alone. He wasn’t really hungry, but maybe there was something small in the kitchen he could munch on. Oooh, maybe Johns had some of that ultra-super-sugary cereal hidden in the back of the cabinets. He kept moving it because Kelly kept eating it. But shit that stuff was good.

Training and habit made him scan the house as he walked soundlessly through the halls. He didn’t turn on any lights because his eyes had already adjusted to the darkness. Even so, he almost passed the living room without noticing the person on the couch.

Ramrod straight and sitting in near-absolute blackness was Nick. Kelly didn’t need to see his face to know that it was Nick. He knew that silhouette and he knew that stillness. It was different than the patient motionlessness they’d all been trained into and he’d seen it come out in Nick more and more recently. This wasn’t the quiet watchfulness the rest of Sidewinder almost always employed. This was Nick descending so deep into his own mind he almost didn’t occupy his own body any more.

Backtracking a couple of steps, Kelly entered the living room, careful to add a little noise to his steps and to stay in Nick’s line of sight. The limited glow from the window showed Kelly that Nick was tracking his movements, but he made no sign that he really  _saw_  Kelly. He didn’t seem ready to attack, though, so even if Nick was half-lost in the past, he didn’t seem to see Kelly as a threat.

That was a bonus. Last time Kelly had had to take Nick down and they’d broken two lamps and a coffee table. No one had said a word about the episode but everything had been magically replaced when Nick came back from his shift on base the next day.

This had been happening a lot ever since Nick and Ty had come back from the month neither of them would talk about. All six of them had nightmares about that month, but Nick and Ty… sometimes they got so lost they couldn’t find their way back.

Tonight wasn’t quite like that, but it was close. It would turn into that if Nick couldn’t stop it. If Kelly couldn’t find a way to help.

Crouching in front of Nick, Kelly put a hand on his knee, the touch barely there to make sure Nick didn’t think he was being held down. Nick turned toward Kelly for a second, his eyes glassy and lost, but he couldn’t seem to focus on anything. Blinking ever so slowly, Nick’s attention refocused on the TV. The completely dark TV.

 _Shit_.

There was nothing Kelly could say to make this better and very little he could do besides be here. All Kelly could do was anchor Nick in the now and remind him that he’d made it back and everything would be okay. That Kelly would never let anything like that happen to him again. He’d die first.

“Be right back, Nicko,” Kelly said, his voice not even a whisper. He ran his fingers over Nick’s bare shoulder and the guy didn’t even flinch. Nick was sinking deeper.

Moving quickly and quietly—he didn’t want to wake the others and turn this into a Sidewinder event—Kelly found Owen’s stash of cereal and poured two bowls, adding milk to both (only a little for Nick while Kelly’s was almost more milk than cereal) and M&Ms to his. Grabbing two spoons and gripping them by the handles with his teeth, Kelly carried the bowls back to the living room and Nick.

He placed the bowl in Nick’s lap and physically closed Nick’s hand around the spoon before sitting cross-legged on the floor near his feet so he could keep a better eye on his friend’s face. Kelly ate slowly, letting his cereal get so soggy it was practically mush, but Nick didn’t eat at all until Kelly gently nudged his hand with the spoon. Even then the motions Nick made were automatic and thoughtless. Kelly was pretty sure he wouldn’t even remember what he’d eaten once Kelly took the bowl away. At least he was moving and eating and swallowing. As simple as the motions seemed, they were  _motion_. It was better than that immobility.

When they finished the cereal, Kelly set the bowls on the coffee table and crawled onto the couch next to Nick. It took a lot of adjusting and a lot of moving Nick around like a mannequin, but eventually Kelly managed to get them both laid out on the couch, Nick’s head resting on his chest and Kelly’s hands stroking patterns on Nick’s skin. Kelly still couldn’t sleep, even with the comforting evenness of Nick’s breathing and the warmth of his presence—his very solid, very  _alive_  presence—so he held Nick and laid there waiting. Letting his mind wander. Hoping that what he was doing for Nick now would be enough to pull him out of this by morning.

And then dawn started to peek through the slats of the blinds over the windows.

“I can still hear him screaming.” Nick’s voice was raw and quiet—almost inaudible—but it had been silent for so long that even that small bit of sound made Kelly jump. “It’s endless sometimes, Kels. But that can be better. That can be better than the dreams when it stops.”

“Which one was it tonight?” Kelly asked, his voice just as quiet as Nick’s. When Nick glanced up at Kelly with a question in his eyes, Kelly clarified. “Was he screaming or did it stop?”

“It stopped.” A shudder so strong it almost looked like the beginning of a seizure, so strong that it shook  _Kelly’s_  whole body, ran through Nick.

“He’s alive, Nick. He is and you are.” He gripped Nick tighter and kissed the top of his head, stroking his curls and whispering in his ear and trying like hell not to cry. “You both made it back to us.”

“We almost didn’t.”

Kelly clamped down on the visceral reaction he had to those words. He didn’t let himself think about that day most of the time. It was still too raw and too terrifying to remember. But he knew he would never forget. Kelly had that moment when he shoved his way into the transport and saw exactly how damaged his brothers were imprinted permanently on his brain. The blood and the bruises and the hollowness of their cheeks and the burns and the scars and the absolute emptiness of their eyes when they finally blinked blankly at Kelly. He would never forget. He’d seen Nick and Ty that day. Before the medics had cleaned them up. He’d seen exactly how close they had been to not coming back.

That’s where  _his_ nightmares went at night. They went to a place where the transport didn’t bring back injuries, they brought back corpses.

“You made it back,” Kelly said for himself as much as Nick. He tightened his hold on Nick and kissed the top of his head again. “You’re fine and Ty’s fine and you’re back home with us and we’ll keep you safe, Lucky. I’ll always keep you safe.”

Nick buried his face in Kelly’s neck, his body trembling. Kelly knew he wasn’t crying because there was no wet on Kelly’s shirt, but he was right on that edge. Holding him tight, Kelly hummed stupid kids songs and rocked them both until they finally fell asleep.

None of the guys said anything when they found Kelly and Nick wrapped around each other like lovers that morning. Ty covered them with a blanket and everyone left the house to let them get some sleep.


End file.
